The electric vehicle community has been in a huge dither the last few days after Ivan Penn, energy reporter for the New York Times wrote what many felt was a hit job on electric vehicles. In fact the article got some things wrong about EVs and road tips, but it also revealed some shortcomings of legacy automakers’ EVs.

For the lodging industry, the growth of electric vehicles provide both challenges and opportunities to ownership and management. As ownership of EVs increases and the average range of pure electric vehicles closes in on 300 miles, EV-driving guests will be taking more road trips and increasingly expect that lodging hosts offer several charging station options on their property.

As of March 31, 2019 there were 63,003 public combined Level 2 and DC fast charger connections in the US, according to our analysis of data from the Alternative Fuels Data Center. In this post we’ll share several charts that we’ve pulled from the AFDC database.

We explore the various factors – including autonomous vehicles, ride sharing, super fast charging rates, BEV/PHEV mix and more – that will affect what will eventually become the “ideal” ratio of EVs to charging stations in a regional market.

How many public EV charging stations are needed within a market to support the charging needs of owners of EVs within a market? The minimum acceptable ratio is actually going to vary a fair amount by the unique combination of factors in each region and market, which is the focus of a follow-on article. With that said, however, my belief is that at least for the next 5-7 years, a ratio of 15-20 to 1 will in fact meet demand in most markets.

Charging is critical to the EV customer experience. Automakers will need to either ensure a superior customer experience through their own charging networks or by deepening their partnerships and relationships with existing charging networks.

In Northern California, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) commuters will likely increasingly be able to charge their EVs at a growing number of transit station parking lots. BART recently conducted two EV-related surveys and has begun a pilot charging station program at one of its stations. I reached out to BART with several questions and have included their answers in their entirety below:

The transition to electric vehicles is poised to reshape many industries, jobs, economies and the environment. Most of these shifts will be positive in the long run, but some will create disruption and pain during the transition off of fossil fuels.